Hundreds of Bending Units complete work on Bender, who blasts off and heads to Earth. Meanwhile, Fry roams New New York lonely and has no friends. Bender lands near Fry and the two become friends. While catching a frisbee, Bender kills the heads of Hanson and thousands of their fans so the DOOP retaliate. They begin attacking Bender. They are so focused on stopping Bender that they shoot Fry with electricity when he tries to stop the fighting. This causes Bender to go on a rampage and destroy every building that he can find in New New York. Noticing the carnage, The Professor enlarges Zoidberg so that he can fight Bender on equal ground. However, Zoidberg also has issues and begins destroying New New York. This causes a turf war between the two giants. While Bender attempts to boil Zoidberg, Fry walks up wanting to make Shrinky-Dinks. While Bender is distracted, Zoidberg cuts Bender's feet off and he is impaled on the Empire State Building, slowly killing him. Fry admonishes everyone for their part in the tragedy, while Bender laments that he was unable to fulfill his dream of killing all humans before dying.

Leela gets to ask a question. After being teased about being unimpulsive, she asks the what if machine the following. What if she was more impulsive?

Leela buys some boots with "a crazy green stripe". The Professor makes Leela his sole heir because she's "so un-impulsive". She kills the Professor by kicking him into his pit of man eating anteaters to get the money. The Professor's death motivates Zoidberg to begin investigating. Hermes finds the video will which shows Leela killing the Professor, so she attacks him, chops him up, and puts his remains in the garbage disposal. Bender catches her disposing of the body, so he tries to extort her ("The X makes it sound cool!"). She kills Bender using a microwave and its radiation, and she turns Bender into a go-kart. Amy insults her by saying that the go-cart is sexier than her, which causes Leela to kill her and stuff the body inside a grandfather clock.

The remaining staff gather in the Accusing Parlor. Zoidberg attempts to solve the mystery. Cubert, Scruffy and Nibbler independently realize who the murderer is and meet their demise as they are about to expose Leela, all on the same sword. Zoidberg finally works it out, only because he gets a letter from Bender he wrote before he dies, but Fry leaves before Zoidberg can reveal the killer and Leela kills Zoidberg. Later, Fry works it out. ("Hey Leela, whatcha eating?" Leela: "Lobster.") Leela is able to keep him quiet by doing something really impulsive: she rapes him, which he likes.

Fry gets to ask a question. Fry's request for a repeat of Bender's question is denied, so he asks: what if he never came to the future?

Fry makes his fateful delivery to I. C. Wiener at Applied Cryogenics. Instead of falling in the freezer, he hits his head. This rips the fabric of space-time, through which we see some of the Planet Express staff. The next day Stephen Hawking drops by Panucci's Pizza. Fry asks him about the hole in nothing, with "monsters" in it. After work, the Vice Presidential Action Rangers abduct Fry. The rangers inform him that they have to fix the time-space continuum or the universe will be destroyed. Fry tells his story and it is decided that when he hit his head he should have died, the attempt at murder fails to fix it and the rift in Space-Time reappears, they try to make him enter the tube but instead he breaks the glass. This causes the universe to collapse on itself and Fry and the Vice Presidential Action Rangers are floating around outside the universe, they start a game of Dungeons & Dragons.

The Professor throws away the What-If Machine because he didn't think the stories were realistic, but declares the fing-longer a success.

However, it is revealed that this entire episode is itself being watched on the What-If Machine by the Professor, who wanted to know what life would be like if he'd invented the fing-longer.

Al Gore received some criticism for his appearance because parts of the show "conflicted starkly with the anti-violence, anti-smoking and family-values themes of Gore's campaign". Gore's spokesperson responded by stating that most viewers would recognize that the show was meant to be entertaining and that it would be taken in the right spirit.

The first of two Anthologies, the Anthology of Interest episodes (and to a lesser extent the comics) are equivalent to Treehouse of Horror on The Simpsons.

This episode is Scruffy's first speaking appearance.

Despite his assertions in "Xmas Story" that Fry's 20th century sense of modesty is outdated, The Professor still seems to have accumulated tickets for public nudity.

this may be a result of the What-If-Machine's imagination.

Just because people are more comfortable with nudity, it doesn't mean public nudity isn't against the law.

The Professor calls the final story in this episode absurd, citing "Stephen Hawking in a pizzeria" as especially bad. Interestingly, in an episode of The Simpsons (Don't Fear the Roofer), Stephen Hawking buys a Little Caesars pizzeria.

Scruffy reappears, although his moustache is now white, not brown like it was when he appeared in "A Fishful of Dollars".

There is also 1 part it is brown for about 2 seconds, at the start of the scene for the third story.

Al Gore is voiced by himself, making it his first appearance in any TV series of any kind. It is also one of the very rare times that a politician appears as himself on a show.

When giant Bender rips Shea Stadium from its foundations, a sign indicates that the Mets were the World Series Champions in 1969 and 1986, which means that they won't win between now and the year 3000! This is further stated in the episode "A Leela of Her Own".

When Bender boils Zoidberg inside Shea Stadium, the stadium is a complete bowl. In real life, Shea was open in the outfield (and torn down in 2009). However, considering Old New York was destroyed, this was likely meant to be a completely new Shea Stadium from the one the Mets used from 1964-2008.

Al Gore: If we don't go back there and make the event happen, the entire universe will be destroyed. And as an environmentalist, I'm against that.

Al Gore: You fool! You foolish fool!

Stephen Hawking: Great, the entire universe was destroyed!Fry: Destroyed? Then where are we now?Al Gore: I don't know but I can tell you where we're not. The universe.Nichelle Nichols: Eternity with nerds. It's the Pasadena Star Trek convention all over again.Gary Gygax: Anyone want to play Dungeons & Dragons for the next quadrillion years?

The Applied Cryogenics scene is missing a certain shadow that was seen in "Space Pilot 3000", but that may be explained by the fact that the being that causes the shadow caused him to fall into the tube.

The DOOP attempts to destroy Bender with something that looks like electricity. Electricity is a known drug for robots as seen in "Hell Is Other Robots".

Fry's afro makes, although with a different look, its first appearance since "Hell Is Other Robots". It will appear again in "Rebirth".

Zoidberg avenges himself on a bank that denied him a credit card application. He previously mentioned having credit cards (since revoked) in "Bender Gets Made".

The anteater spitting the glasses back onto the Professor's skull is a reference to the fact we never see his eyes.

At first it seems as though Bender is going to ask what it would be like if he were human, but instead he changes it. This foreshadows future events because in the sequel, "Anthology of Interest II", Bender does ask the What-If machine what it would be like if he were human.

This is the second time that Leela is seen having sex with somebody out of impulse (the first time being "Love's Labours Lost in Space" with Zapp Brannigan) and the first time we see her in bed with Fry. Although, since it was during a What-If scenario, it cannot be regarded as canon.

Bender says he'd like to "axe" the What-If Machine a question ("Xmas Story").

Fry asks, "Was Planet Express built on an Indian graveyard?", a reference to the horror movie Poltergeist.

"Good night, sweet prince" is a direct and well-known quote from the play Hamlet by William Shakespeare; these words are spoken by Horatio as Hamlet dies.

There are several references about Dungeons & Dragons, including rolling dice to decide what to do, and holding a +1 mace.

Zoidberg wears the famous hat of the great detective Sherlock Holmes, and "The Accusing Parlor" looks a lot like his home in London from the books.

The story of a giant robot coming to earth and making friends with a lonely kid is a parody of the story behind The Iron Giant which was made into an animated film in 1999.

One of the members of the Vice Presidential Action Rangers is Deep Blue which was a computer made by IBM that beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in 1997.

The cover of the Monster Manual at the end of the third segment is exactly the same as the original Monster Manual from Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st editon from the late 1970s. This particular book was, of course, written by Gygax.

Leela and Bender are amongst the rest of the Planet Express Crew when the rip in space-time forms. This shouldn't be, because Fry was responsible for the two joining Planet Express in the first place. There have been some explanations for this:

This could just be another inconsistency of the What-If Machine, just like how Nibbler's shadow is missing.

The Fry-Hole probably brought them there randomly.

This same mistake was made in the first part of this episode, where Leela works for Planet Express, and Fry isn't assigned a job. This shouldn't be, because Leela would have assigned Fry the job of a Delivery Boy since Bender wasn't there to help Fry escape from her and the police, and because of this, Leela wouldn't have lost her job for making friends with Fry, forcing them to go to Fry's only living relative (Farnsworth), thus making them members of Planet Express, but this may also be an inconsistency of the What-If Machine. Bender would be dead because he would have committed suicide.

Though Fry and Leela could still have ended up as employees at Planet Express because Fry's attempted escape could still have ensued and could have arrived at the same conclusion without Bender, though without Bender's participation the events leading up to this similar conclusion would have been different. The only major effort on Bender's part was the bending of the bars at the head museum, and they had only attempted to hide there because of Bender's suggestion that it was free on Tuesdays.

After Fry falls and bumps his head on the freezer door, he gets up and the table he was sat at is now a lot further away from the freezer than it was when he fell and the can isn't in his hand or on the floor.

Scruffy's moustache and hat keep changing colors throughout the episode.

Al Gore called Nichelle Nichols 'Commander Uhura', but she only had 1 gold braid which indicates the rank of Lieutenant.

Al Gore may not have known this. This may also be yet another inconsistency of the What-If Machine.

He may also be referring to her later rank from the films despite Nichelle wearing the more iconic TOS uniform where she held the lower rank.

Several times throughout the episode, the characters say the word "ask", which was said in Xmas Story to be an archaic term for "ax".

When the usage of the word "ax" is first brought up, Leela knows that "ask" is an archaic pronunciation, implying that people still know about the pronunciation.

If Fry hadn't fallen in the cryogenic tube, that means that Nibbler never made the call for I. C. Wiener. Therefore, Fry wouldn't have gone to the cryogenic lab for a delivery at all.

The reason Fry didn't fall into the tube may have been because Nibbler failed to get to the lab in time, meaning that he still made the call.

When Leela kills Bender with the microwave, multiple errors can be found:

When Bender collapses, his now detached eyes are shown as spheres. However, when his eyes move or fall out in other episodes (such as "Space Pilot 3000" and "A Flight to Remember"), they are shown to be rounded cylinders. However, they would later be spherical in "Ghost in the Machines".

When Leela pointed the microwave at Bender and destroyed him with radiation, the microwave was unplugged.

If a robot was actually hit by microwave radiation, it wouldn't fall apart the way it did.

When Gygax hands Fry the +1 mace, he is on Fry's right. However, during the wide shot immediately afterwords, Gygax is directly behind Fry.